Alaska

The Green Party of Washington State (GPoWS) will be hosting a regional gathering of members (and potential members) of the Green Party on Saturday, 13 November 2010. Greens from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia, Alaska, and beyond are invited to join us in Seattle for a day of fun, including motivational speakers, music, and food.

→ Participate in developing the Green Party vision.

→ Reconnect with old friends and meet new ones.

→ Discuss the state of the world and what we can do together to better it.

→ Learn how to form a Campaign Support System to encourage Green Party candidates and legislative measures. Continue Reading →

The proposals to place Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming and Vermont into inactive status is being voted on now, as mentioned in an earlier article. As of now there are a few “no” votes, and a few “abstain” votes, but most are voting “yes”. Thus far votes have been cast by 22 states or caucuses.

Two other issues are up for votes right now. One, Proposal 433, would appoint Hank Bardel of New York to the Finance Committee. The other, Proposal 432 would establish a “fast track” system for Steering Committee approval of time-sensitive sign-on letters and/or petitions forwarded by the Eco-Action Committee.

The Green National Committee (GNC) is responsible for decision making between Annual National Meetings. Over the holidays they have been busy, and several proposals are now in the voting phase.

In the not too distant past, some proposals and appointments have failed due to a lack of a voting quorum. To address that problem it has been proposed that four states be assigned a “temporary inactive status”. They include Alaska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Vermont.

All these proposals were submitted by the Accreditation Committee. This committee is headed up by Nannette Garrett of Georgia and Roger Snyder of New York.

So far there have been only “Yes” and “abstain” votes cast, but only a few of those. Voting began today and ends on the 10th.

In 1992, Linda Martin and Mary Jordan became the first Green Party candidates for U.S. Senate.

Mary Jordan ran for U.S. Senate in Alaska, receiving over 20,000 votes, 8.37% of the total vote in a three way race against the infamous Frank Murkowski. Linda Martin ran for U.S. Senate in Hawai’i against an entrenched Democratic Party in 1992 against Daniel Inouye, who had been in the Senate since 1962, and who handedly defeated his opponents winning over 70% of the vote in every re-election – that is until 1992. Linda Martin earned 49,921 votes, 13.73%, holding Inouye to 57.3%, while the Republican picked up 26.9%. Her race changed Hawai’i politics, and Green Party politics, setting records for both total votes and percent of votes by a Green in a partisan race. In this video, Mike Feinstein interviews Linda Martin in 2003 about her campaign.

Two years later, Barbara Blong picked up 140,567 votes running for U.S. Senate in California. In the 1990s, Greens ran for U.S. Senate in Alaska (twice), Hawai’i, California, Maine, Oregon (twice), New Mexico, and New York.

“ANWR is 19.5 million acre refuge in the northeastern Alaska. Within those borders, there is a 1.5 million acre section called “1002.” …It is the lands within the 1002 area that would be opened for exploration and drilling. The Native-owned Arctic Slope Regional Corporation owns 92,000 acres of subsurface land and the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation, also Native-owned, owns 92,000 surface acres of land within the 1002 area.”

Many Inupiat people, perhaps a majority, who live in this region support oil drilling. Their view is expressed by former Mayor Benjamin P. Nageak: “ANWR holds resources that can be extracted safely with care and concern for the entire eco-system it encompasses. The Inupiat people, working through the North Slope Borough, will act in the same careful, caring and cautious manner we always have when dealing with our lands and the seas.”

A recent web article is worthy of some review and discussion in regards to Governor Palin’s “Record on Alaska Native and Tribal Issues”. It is good when substantive policy issues are referenced in the discussion of Palin. A lot of people are unaware of the importance of indigenous issues in Alaska. In the 2000 Census, 15.6% of the Alaska population listed themselves as Alaskan native or American Indian. “While over 40% of the residents live in the largest city of Anchorage, most of the rest of the state is sparsely populated or uninhabited with communities separated by vast distances. 52.3% of the state population lives in frontier areas.” This makes for a significant percentage of the population in rural regions. There are also well-established tribal governments in Alaska. “There are 562 tribal governments in the United States with 225 of them located in Alaska,” explains Paul G. Moorhead, a Federal Indian law and policy attorney with the Indian Tribal Governments Practice Group at Gardner, Carton & Douglas in Washington, D.C.”

The most significant act in recent history that impacted indigenous and Native Alaskan peoples was “in 1971, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was signed into law by the U.S. President, under which the Natives relinquished aboriginal claims to their lands.[2] In return, they received access to 44 million acres (180,000 km²) of land and were paid $963 million. The land and money were divided among regional, urban, and village corporations.”

Over at The Champion Newspapers they are carrying a piece about Cynthia McKinney winning support in her native Georgia at the state Green Party convention back on May 3rd, securing seven of that state’s eight delegates. Kat Swift won the eight delegate.

The Park Slope Greens in NYC are encouraging their membership to attend the city convention and get set to be a delegate to the nominating convention set for July in Chicago.